September 29, 2010

DCU Finale Tournament Story


Well I'm a little behind, but last Friday we capped off our DC Universe season with a final tournament. There were six players who came out for the event (which is probably all of the people who are reading this article!). The rounds shape up as follows; the winners are in italics:

Round 1: Jason vs Jordan, Will vs Seb, Roy vs Scott
Round 2: Jason vs Roy, Scott vs Will, Jordan vs Seb
Round 3: Jason vs Seb, Scott vs Jordan, Roy vs Will

I ended up playing in Jason's place due to him having to leave after the first round. He found a really interesting little combo equipping Killer Shark with a Batmobile. Using his pay willpower ability to increase his attack and defense, while becoming unstunnable thanks to the Batmobile is probably not a combination that the designers foresaw, but it was pretty fun nonetheless!

One of the great things about this set was the big endurance swings in the late game. I saw a lot of games being played with endurance totals like 10/12 at the end of turn six, but ending on turn seven at -19/-12. That's just a lot of fun in my opinion, and goes to show that late-going games can be really exciting while still remaining close.

After two rounds we had two players with 2-0 records. Will and Roy faced each other down with their constructed decks, and when the dust cleared it was the end of turn seven. With it being Roy's initiative he played a ton of effects on his attacking 7-drop Hal Jordan to pump him up over 30 attack! Will took the bruising but was able to score a stun back. Having a few smaller characters left on his attack step to attack from his hidden was enough to win him the game and the tournament!

Congratulations to Will for placing top in the DCU tourney, especially considering his affinity for Marvel. My condolences to Roy, who had the bad luck of placing second in not one but two DCU tournaments. And of course my thanks to everyone for showing up and supporting our group well into the second year post-UDE. It's great to see and I hope to continue things into 2011!

September 07, 2010

Fall 2010 - The State of Affairs

VS System

I thought that it would be good to update everyone about things with our gaming group as our DCU tournaments are coming to a close. As it stands, I'm very happy with the continuing attendance for the weekly Friday night VS System tournaments. We'll wrap up with DCU on the last Friday of September (Sept 24th) with another big tournament which I trust will be good fun for all. Please make sure to mark it on your calendar!

Through October and November we will play some fun tournaments with no prize support while I prepare things for December and into the New Year. The details of those plans will be forthcoming as they are solidified; but have no fear, we WILL continue playing VS into 2011 with more awesome new events and prizes!

Scheduling-wise, we've been talking about moving the tournaments from Friday evenings to Thursdays. I haven't settled on this yet, but am leaning toward making the change starting in December. There are a lot of reasons why this will likely happen, but until it's finalized with a date we'll continue to play VS tournaments on Friday evenings.

Other Games

A while back I ran a test league for the Call of Cthulhu LCG. While the game itself was very well received with the small number of players I was able to recruit, it just didn't make sense to try running weekly events. Based on that experience I have been trying to come up with some options for gaming that will allow us to have regularly scheduled, fun events (not only for Call of Cthulhu) for a variety of games.

The basic idea is to run a weekly tournament group on Sundays at Trilogy. The time hasn't been determined yet, but will likely be ironed out between Pascal, Sebastien and I over the next few weeks. Each week we would play a tournament for a different game, providing regular events to enjoy while not overloading people with deckbuilding chores or events to participate in. The tentative monthly Sunday game schedule would be:

1st Sunday - Warlord CCG (website)
2nd Sunday - Call of Cthulhu LCG (website)
3rd Sunday - Warhammer: Invasion LCG (website)
4th & 5th Sunday - Open board/card gaming or no events

Feel free to post comments here or contact me with questions or input. I'd love to hear what you think about things. These events are no good if they don't work for the players!